Hackers attack Malaysian government websites

Kuala Lumpur: Over 50 Malaysian
government websites have been attacked by unknown hackers
despite measures taken by the authorities to protect them.

"These attacks started at approximately 11.30 pm
yesterday. We are able to confirm that 51 government websites
were attacked and there has been disruption at various levels
to at least 41 of those websites," the Malaysian Communication
and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said.

"However, we do not expect the overall recovery to
these websites to take long as most websites have already
recovered from the attack.

"Our monitoring of the situation showed that there was
a reduced level of attacks by 4.00 am this morning (Thursday)
and upon further evaluation, so far we gauge that there has
been little impact on Malaysian users as a result of this
attack," MCMC statement said.

The statement added that the public should report any
information they may have regarding the identity of these
hackers as the act to disrupt network services is a serious
offence, which is punishable by law. It added that the attempt
to hack MCMC`s website was not successful.

Local websites had been hacked ahead of the deadline
set by a foreign-based hacker group, Anonymous, that said it
would attack the Malaysian Government portal at 3.30 am today,
according to reports.

The Sabah Tourism website has since then gone offline.
Another website hacked was www.cidb.gov.my, which belongs to
the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB).

It was defaced with a long message that scolded the
Government for censoring the Internet. However, a while later,
the site was back to normal.

CyberSecurity Malaysia, responsible for the nation`s
borders in cyberspace, confirmed that several websites were
hacked. But it declined to say how many and which were the
sites.

The group had said in a Youtube posting that it was
acting against the various forms of censorship by the
Malaysian government and the recent move to block 10
file-sharing websites.